A method of Earth terrain tessellation on the GPU for space simulators

Abstract

This paper presents a new distributed method for virtual Earth terrain tessellation on a graphics processing unit (GPU) for space simulator complexes. The method operates in real time in multi-object virtual scenes comprising up to two million polygons. A polygonal terrain model is constructed using triangle patches of different levels of detail on graphics cards with programmable tessellation. Patches of the same level of detail are calculated entirely on the GPU, in parallel and independently, by using a developed shader program written in the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL). This paper also describes a patch extraction algorithm for visible Earth surface rendering and an algorithm for correcting the barycentric coordinates of tessellated patch vertices that allows triangles in the terrain model to be docked without geometric discontinuities. Based on the distributed methods and algorithms developed, a program complex for virtual Earth surface visualization was created and successfully tested. The proposed solution can also be employed in virtual environment systems, virtual labs, educational geo-applications, etc.